I wanted to play Wrath of the Lich King, and couldn't afford a Windows XP license. I figured out how to play it in Linux, and never looked back. My distro reviews always discuss framerates.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Ubuntu and WoW

Turns out I was wrong when I said that nobody in the Debian ecosystem is providing Wine 1.5.6, the version required to run World of Warcraft. Wine 1.5.6 is prominently listed on the press release for PinguyOS 12.04 LTS, an Ubuntu derivative that emphasizes extra software and features, at the expense of leanness. The target user is anyone that's really used to Windows and wants to try Linux. To this end, they've built a customized GNOME interface with a variety of themes meant to resemble various releases of Windows. They've also
included the usual captive software suspects: codecs, drivers, and such. The ISO
is around 1.7 GB

I've never tried PinguyOS. The developer likes a much more featureful (or bloated, from my POV) desktop experience than I do. But I'm a special case, trying to wring the most performance I can out of elderly hardware that's well behind the curve.

Pinguy reviews are generally positive, and it is Ubuntu at its heart. If you have a powerful machine and/or are willing to seriously prune your installation, are used to Ubuntu, and are also disappointed at Wine 1.5.5, give PinguyOS 12.04 LTS a try. The developer claims that system requirements are the same as for default Ubuntu.

I may install and recklessly prune it; I may just see if I can add Pinguy's repos and/or PPAs to an install of Lubuntu or Madbox, or I may just stay with openSUSE 12.1 for the time being.

edit: So of course I post this 26 hours after the Ubuntu PPA moves to Wine 1.5.7.... I'm going to have to try it, and see if it works.